How many of us have handed over a mobile device that gives our children complete access to the world, with all of its lures and dangers? Many of us feel helpless when faced with youthful demands for technology and our own inability to understand how it can be used -- or misused.

It would certainly change the culture of deception that leads kids and many of their parents to lie about their dates of birth to join social networking sites in the first place and provide a much safer environment for tweens who are already there in droves.

There is nothing wrong with services like Skout as long as they're used with appropriate safeguards, and Skout does offer safety tips for meeting people offline. But there have been three reported cases of teenage users being raped by adults -- posing online as teenagers -- who found them on Skout.